Saturday, July 3, 2010

Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength

So... another round of layoffs happened at my workplace. Essentially, all that transition work I've been doing for the past month has been thrown out the window because my job share partner was laid off... :-( I am sad... for my friend... but I also know that God's ways are higher than our ways! Something better is out there waiting for her.

So... this does not necessarily translate into back to working more hours for me, but it does mean that I have to "pitch in" during these summer months in order to get a new norm in place for September. My boss knows of my desire to keep my weekly hours capped at a certain level and she respects that, for which I am truly grateful.

My boss and I... we've become friends over the years. When this latest round of layoffs happened, we chatted for a bit about it. As we were brainstorming ideas on how to get our workload done with less people... she said something very interesting to me. She said that in this day and age of economic uncertainly, there isn't a job that's secure anymore. One where we can sink our hearts and souls into knowing that it will be for long-term. It might just be better not to get too attached to our jobs... just treat it like it is --- a job! We don't need to give ourselves away for it...Automatically, my mind went to the verse in the Bible from Mark 12:30 (NIV) where it says:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Opposite to what my boss and I talked about, we are to sink our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength into loving God. What does that mean exactly, I asked myself? I think that once we stop loving God with our ALL, we start to lose the spark... we lose sight of the reason of why we serve Him in the first place... we become selfish and self-centered... we forget to give ourselves away for the Kingdom of God. Sad, isn't it?

I am reminded of the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan that I read this past Christmas. This book describes how we should be loving God... in a crazy kind-of-way... in a Mark 12:30 kind-of-way! My prayer is that I will continue to grow towards having that crazy love for my Heavenly Father; that I will have a whatever-it-takes attitude when it comes to serving Him; that I will "not become weary in doing good"... knowing that "at the proper time I (we) will reap a harvest if I (we) do not give up." (from Galatians 6:9 NIV)

Help me, God... for many times I do not have what it takes to love you with that crazy, out-of-this-world kind of love!